Improving the Communication Performance in Multi-agent Systems for Distributed Manufacturing Process Control

The distributed control of complex and dynamic manufacturing systems is a challenging task and the multi-agent system (MAS) becomes a suitable solution due to its flexibility in both distributing and integrating software functionalities across the controlled system. This paper investigates the potentials of improving agent message delivery by enhancing the underlying communication network with IP QoS mechanisms using service differentiation and early congestion avoidance techniques. The extensive simulation experiments demonstrated the effectiveness of our approach in providing small latency, small jitter and improved throughputs in ACL message delivery, whilst without deteriorating other data applications between distributed controllers.